Joys of a Server Crash

Usually Wednesdays, along with the month of June are terrible for me. It has always been this way. I really can't explain why except that both Wednesday and June happen to be middles, the middle of the week and the middle of the year. However, this past Tuesday took the prize. The server at work decided it wanted to take a vacation. The support people came out Wednesday but unfortunately the wrong part had been sent. Thursday just about everything was replaced on the server except the hard drives(I wouldn't be surprised if there was a kitchen sink in there now). Now the fun part. The driver for the new motherboard wouldn't work and was not recognizing the hard drives. So I couldn't repair the problem with the operating system. After spending two hours downloading different drivers recommended by the manufacturer and on the phone with software support, it was clear I was in an endless loop. I can do basic stuff, replacing hard drives on workstations, adding new users to the network, e.g. and probably could have eventually resolved the driver issue but didn't have the time, we needed our server up, so at 6:00pm Thursday I put in the call to the cavalry. Those guys in Hattiesburg MS are wonderful. After about two hours Friday, the correct drivers had been installed. Now the fun with the operating system began. We were fortunate that the data files were on a separate hard drive from which the operating system had to be reinstalled and therefore no data was lost.

The accounting software had been corrupted in the crash Tuesday, so I had to reinstall it but again I was lucky. I make backups of the data files every day and so all I had to do was restore from Monday, then go around to all the workstations and redo the setup. I finally was able to go home at 8:00pm. Today, all of us have to come in and redo the work from Tuesday morning and all the stuff that was done by hand during the rest of the week. It shouldn't take too long today. At least not 10 to 12 hours.

While all this was going on, Wednesday I had to setup a standalone in order for payroll to be done. I didn't want to be mobbed by 100+ employees clamoring for their paychecks. Again I was fortunate. I had transferred all the data files from the server to my computer on the 17 and after installing the software was able to do a restore. I was to have added a SCSI controller card on the server but never got around to doing it. It wasn't a pressing issue and I had been running a fever for the past two weeks and knew it wouldn't be a good time to do it. So other than one weeks totals not being on the check stubs, everyone got their checks.

Moral of the story, if I hadn't consistently done the daily tape backups and the data backups to the hard drive, I would not be sitting here typing this. I would still be at work trying to rebuild the data in the accounting software. The guy who replaced all the equipment and the one who got our server up and running could not say why everything happened the way it did, only that it was unique.

So whether at work or home, BACKUP your data. It will save you a lot of grief.